Cirrus@Austlit

'Zahid Gamieldien’s All the Missing Children has all the makings of an archetypal crime mystery. Two siblings, eight-year-old Jack and six-year-old Lonnie, have disappeared. There’s a detective covertly on the case—suspended police officer Omar Dualeh, who takes matters into his own hands because he’s convinced their vanishing is connected to the abduction of a different pair of siblings several years earlier.' (Introduction)   

'Debut Spotlight: Abbey Lay’s debut novel joins a rich canon of literature that explores the complexity of intimacy between young women. The exhilirating possibilities of adolescence buzz through this suburban-set Australian coming-of-age story.'  (Introduction)

'With a mess of curls framing the cheeky smile almost permanently plastered on his face, 10-year-old Percy "Boy" Collins (Bundjalung primary schooler Lennox Monaghan) is the beating heart of this affecting story about family, friendship and the trials and tribulations of an atypical childhood.'(Introduction)

'In 2009, 2010 and 2015, Bangladeshi-Australian writer Sanya Rushdi experienced three episodes of psychosis and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Years later, a narrator who shares her first name, background and medical history attempts to disentangle the model of medical care she’s subjected to and the social system that deems her a threat.' (Introduction)

'Campus novels so often involve a coming-of-age: the formative years of young adulthood are spent within the confines of institutions, with their unspoken political and social structures ripe for exploration, particularly those of morality, ethics, gender and sex. University as a microcosm of the broader world is the setting of Zeynab Gamieldien’s debut novel The Scope of Permissibility, which expands the genre to focus on a group of devout Muslim students’ experience of love, life and friendship in Sydney.' (Introduction)

'Neha Kale spoke to Sonia Nair about being a brown woman writing art criticism, the limitations of diversity rhetoric, and finding joy in the same things she makes a living writing about.' (Introduction)

'In Andrew Pippos’s immersive and multi-layered début novel, Lucky’s, a tragic shooting that occurs in the last bastion of a Greek-Australian restaurant franchise becomes the fulcrum around which mental health, heartbreak, displacement, and toxic masculinity are explored.' (Introduction)

'The Coconut Children is an assured début from nineteen-year-old novelist Vivian Pham, who has drawn upon the richness of Sydney’s south-western suburbs to construct a deeply affecting coming-of-age story revolving around teenager Sonny.' (Introduction)

'Bhakthi speaks to Sonia Nair about rocking the boat, the precarity of the media in a digital age, and the ever-crushing news cycle.' (Introduction)

'The culmination of a journey through the courts as both a judge’s associate and a complainant, Bri Lee’s debut memoir is a damning look at the deficiencies of the legal system and an exploration of what justice looks like for sexual abuse survivors.' (Introduction)

'The minutiae and messiness of family life as it comes together and unravels time and time again are delicately rendered in Tracy Farr’s second novel, The Hope Fault. The unrelenting rain that forms the lugubrious backdrop for much of the novel conjures up the same rich, atmospheric setting of the late Georgia Blain’s Between a Wolf and a Dog (2016), and suffuses the story with a sense of foreboding.' (Introduction)